No-Code's Replacement Is Just Code (Written by a Robot on Linux)

The author argues that LLM-powered coding agents have made no-code platforms like Airtable obsolete: instead of a visual builder, you spin up a Linux VM, hand an AI agent your data model and workflows, and it writes the app directly. The piece doubles as a pitch for exe.dev, which sells exactly this stack—preconfigured Linux VMs with a built-in coding agent named Shelley. The broader thesis is that no-code was always a workaround for the difficulty of writing software, and now that AI closes that gap, boring open-source Linux is the superior, low-lock-in platform.